Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Quixote is Enchanted, Again

Chapter XLVI

Amazingly, all things were settled: somehow the curate convinces the officers not
to arrest Don Quixote on account of his madness, the officers then act as
arbiters between Sancho and the barber ordering the pack saddle to be returned,
while the curate paid for the basin as a settlement, Don Luis’s servants agree
to return to his father so that Luis can be with Doña Clara, and Don Fernando
pays the landlord for the damage done to the wineskins by Quixote. Next, several of the men, disguised as
phantoms from the enchanted inn, tie up Quixote while he is resting and place
him in a makeshift cage upon a passing oxcart, while convincing him that he must
go to be married to the Lady Dulcinea of El Toboso, which settles his heart as
he accepts his temporary imprisonment.

Chapter XLVII

The curate and barber say farewell to the remaining group,
and as the curate and barber take leave with the Holy Brotherhood and the
wagoner pulling the oxcart with the caged Quixote, Sancho, following behind on
his mule and pulling Rozinante, knows something is not right. When several horsemen catch up to the
traveling band, they inquire of Quixote’s state in which the curate begins to
tell the men the fabled version in earshot of Quixote, but Sancho interrupts
and admits he knows it is a scheme; therefore, when they stop for a rest, the
curate tells the master of the group, the canon of Toledo, Quixote’s true fate, and the men agree
that books of chivalry are a “hodgepodge of outlandish absurdities.”